Passage to Port Royale
by Larxenne
Summary: 30 years before "The Curse of the Black Pearl," Englishmen were leaving their home country in droves to realize opportunities in the still new World. In 1635, two men set sail for the colonies, not yet knowing where their journeys will lead...
1. Setting Sail

Passage to Port Royale

_The first permanent English settlement of the New World was established in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. The early 17__th__ century was a time of great expansion and exploration, especially for the English empire (the Spaniards were already well established in South America). In 1620, the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. England acquired its first permanent colonies in the Caribbean soon after: St. Kitts in 1624, Barbados in 1627, and Nevis in 1628. _

_But who were the first colonials, the adventurers who sought new life and opportunities upon the endless continent or on the little islands? When a country's population grows too big for its land, the first to leave are those with dreams and those who have to. They are rich, poor, and middling—but they all sail away from their monotonous lives prepared make their own futures, for better or for worse._

_In 1665, six people would meet in the notorious city of Port Royale, Jamaica to put into effect a chain of events that would evoke the supernatural and the strange, a saga in its own right. But these people, these remarkable colonists, would never have met if they had not made the passage from their homeland, if they hadn't seen (or have been forced to see) the opportunities for work and plunder that lay waiting in the New World._

**July, 1635**

Ships were leaving London for the New World in droves. Weatherby Swann was both disgusted and proud to be part of what seemed like a mass exodus from the fair city of London. His father hadn't wanted him to go—his father, who was related to someone in the House of Lords, his father, who cared more about status than money. Weatherby had lived too long by his father's wishes (more like commandments, really), but realized that his family's status would never improve if they did not have more money. Didn't anyone realize that it was money—not lineage—that _truly_ secured a man's future? Weatherby looked the part of a gentleman, for sure. He enjoyed riding around in a carriage and wearing rich brocades and talking politics with other stuffy gentlemen. But that was only part of who he was. The other part of him was driven by one thing, and one thing only: ambition. He wanted more than relations with political figures. He wanted to shape the English empire, to serve the crown and make lots of money while doing it.

He hadn't asked his father for permission—he bought several thousand acres of an island called St. Kitts from the King, bought several indentures and passage to the New World. Sugar plantations were turning profits quickly in the Caribbean. If he could make a profitable plantation off of cheap land, he would surely be rich. And wealth would buy him more status than his ancestors had ever garnered him. "Perhaps," he thought wryly, "I will be governor of one of these little islands some day."

* * *

Billy Turner hurried though the dank streets of London, following hundreds of other teenage boys and young men headed toward the docks. He looked around at all of the other sorry immigrants, all good English boys like himself, all leaving impoverished families whose farms would not produce, whose parents could not feed them. They were the result of overpopulation from prosperous times, and now they fled their home country out of necessity—they were a burden on the land that they loved. But some held their heads high. Billy watched these men, who on the outside looked as abject and degraded as himself, but were, for some reason, standing tall like they were privy to some secret that Billy didn't know. "How can they walk towards the docks like that?" Billy asked himself. "How can they look at those ships and see anything other than the loss of their families? Don't they know they will never see their loved ones again?" But then a chilling thought passed through Billy's mind. _"Maybe they don't care,"_ he thought darkly. But how could a man not care for his mother?

Billy's family had been farmers for as long as anyone could remember. There was nary a stitch of high-born blood in his body, but his forefathers had all been good Englishmen, followers of the King and the Church of England. His favorite childhood memories were of his grandmother's stories of Gloriana, the great Queen Elizabeth, and how she had looked when she went on progress. "Now that was a real queen," his grandmother had told him. "She always had time for her people, even for the lowliest and most undeserving."

"She would ride along with the entire court, and we would line the road, dressed in our finest, with flowers in our hair. The other young women in town and I talked about her for years on end between her progresses. She was the most beautiful creature in the world, and we all loved her more than we loved anyone else in the world. The way she smiled at us, the way she gave herself completely to our welfare. She never married, you know, because she said she was only truly married to England." Charles I, of course, was not nearly as resplendent as the last queen of the Tudor family, but Billy loved him because Billy loved England. And now he was leaving it.

There was just not enough food left. They had started breeding livestock to make more money, but then the price of livestock dropped, and they had little room for crops, and no money to pay the field hands. The Turner family had never been rich, but they had always gotten by. Finally, in 1635, the strain had gotten too great and Billy had no choice but to seek employment in the New World. He had left his family's farm on foot, headed for the great city of London. Before leaving, his mother had packed his clothes and his father had given him a few of the family's precious shillings. His grandmother, now very old and weak, had stood up and embraced him. Then, she had reached into her purse and pulled out one of her most precious possessions—a 1573 coin, minted during the time of Gloriana's reign. "Keep it always; use it to remember your duties to family and country," she had told him.

As he walked through the streets of London, he fingered the coin in his pocket and thought of his grandmother. How could he be leaving both his family and his country, not knowing when he would return? What if he died in Virginia and was not buried on English soil? Would his soul be doomed to roaming until he found his way back to the land that he loved so desperately? He held the coin tightly as a talisman, a reassurance that he would somehow survive in the New World and return the coin to its rightful place.

He finally arrived at the docks and showed the immigration officials his indenture papers. In front of him and behind him was a long line of young men just like him—young, unskilled workers looking for employment. He walked up the dock and onto the ship, which was much smaller than he thought ships carrying over a hundred passengers would be. He had never been on the sea before, and was suddenly afraid, not of leaving his family and homeland, but of what would come. The devastating possibility of failure pushed his shoulders into a slump and he trudged up the gangplank, holding the Elizabethan coin as tightly as his hand could clench.

* * *

Merchant ships, military ships, and privateer ships came in and out of London all through that hot July. So many people moved out to the New World, and a few came back, fed up with their luck there. The most who headed out were young men, seeking a better future. Some were like Weatherby Swann, looking for riches in land speculation and smuggling, among other trades. Others were like Billy Turner, forced to leave by poverty. But they all stood on ship decks at night, worrying and hoping, not realizing how severely their lives would change, not allowing the reality of the unknown to sink in. They simply looked out at the impossibly large expanse of sea, swept up in the power of its vastness.


	2. Returning Home

Passage to Port Royale

**London: August, 1635**

As boats left for the new world by the hundreds, one family arrived in London after years of self-imposed exile. Teague Sparrow, well-to-do Englishman and adventure seeking smuggler, couldn't help the fact that he had fallen in love with a Spanish girl, converted to Catholicism, and had thus been separated from his country of origin for a time. He had sailed the seas with his lovely Alicia, amassing more money than his family had had already. But it had never been about the money for Teague Sparrow—he was an adventurer at heart, a man who would have joined the navy if not for his parents' insistence that he be brought up as a gentleman, learning useless manners and pleasantries, reading about the colonies from afar and wondering when he would get a chance to fight with native savages and defend himself from marauders (or perhaps do some marauding of his own). He had longed for an uncontrolled rush of adrenaline, to be the antithesis of what he was raised to be: a _gentleman_. So he had sailed to Spain and signed onto an expedition headed to the Spanish Main. He became a trusted Spanish trader (but was known as a rogue by other nations) and brought finished goods to the colonies, with plenty of close calls along the way.

He met Alicia off the coast Spain during one of his trips to Europe, and found in her a kindred spirit. She was much more of a lady than he a gentleman, but in their relationship he found another side to her personality. Not a greedy side or a ruthless side, but a side that asked "_What do I live for?"_ Alicia was a proud Spanish catholic, the most beautiful woman in her village, and profoundly bored for the first seventeen years of her life. No matter what kind of suitor—rich, noble, or handsome—asked for her hand, she would refuse. She had every intention of getting married someday, but her strong intuition told her that none of the men who courted her with ardent Spanish passion were _just right_. When her parents got fed up with their daughter's stubbornness, they told her she could pick any of her current suitors or become a nun—sitting around waiting for the "right" man would leave her an old maid, which was most unladylike. So Alicia decided to become a nun.

Since her family had good connections, she was to study religion in Rome. She took one maidservant with her and boarded a ship from Cadiz that would take her to Italy. A few days out, their ship ran into a thunderstorm, and the ship descended into chaos. Alicia was unafraid, and she refused to stay below in her cabin, waiting delicately for the storm to pass. Instead, she pleaded seasickness and journeyed up to the deck, relishing the pitch and roll of the ship, feeling more invigorated with each clap of thunder. There she was, a young noblewoman, headed to Rome to become a nun, feeling the wrath of the heavens pounding down on her and loving it all. She thought she heard God speaking to her, telling her that life wasn't worth living if it wasn't lived out on the ocean.

In her rapturous discovery, Alicia was unaware of her dangerous position on the deck. She had gotten so close to the edge of the boat that a big enough wave could sweep her out to sea. Teague Sparrow, the captain, saw his lady passenger flirting with death and rushed out of his cabin to talk some sense into her. As he grabbed her arm, she turned around and he saw her—clothes completely soaked, hair sticking to her face, wild, and absolutely perfect.

Alicia looked at Captain Sparrow with new eyes. He was not the kindly captain that had carried her trunks or the man she had shared tea with on the first day of the trip. No—he was someone who experienced this often, who spent his life on the sea, who lived life in the constant presence of the ocean. And in that moment, she loved him. Loved him because he had the life she knew she wanted, loved him because he had something to live for, loved him because he probably knew the power of God better than any priest who sat in a monastery and studied dead words. And so she did the craziest, least ladylike thing she had ever done in her life: she took his face into her hands and kissed him, not considering any of the consequences.

And so they had lived together, smuggling goods (both bought and stolen) to the Caribbean and exploring the oceans. They made friends with other adventurers on every continent: Africans, Indians, other Spaniards, Chinese businessmen and the occasional European. It was not until they had their first child that Teague insisted they return to London.

A few months before Jack's birth, a letter from one of Teague's last friends in England had arrived, telling him that both of his parents were now dead and both of the family's homes—one in London and one in the country—were his to claim. Teague kept the letter stored away, with no intentions of retiring from the life that he and Alicia loved so desperately. However, when he saw his son, who was so small and precious and beautiful, with a shock of black hair and Spanish features, he realized that his son would never be an adventurer if he wasn't raised as a gentleman.

It wasn't the love of the sea that had created Teague, but distaste for everything associated with the word _gentleman._ If he were to impart an adventurous spirit to his son, he would have to first give little Jack a gentleman's upbringing. He talked this over with Alicia, who was eventually came around, realizing that she would have to make sacrifices for the son that she loved. So it was in August of 1635 that Teague and Alicia Sparrow, newly converted Anglicans, landed in London and became subjects of King Charles I. Their little boy Jack would know nothing but society and comfort and would have tutors, governesses, dancing masters and fine clothing. He would be raised just as Teague and Alicia had been raised. As the couple stepped off of their ship and felt land beneath their feet, they wondered if they were right to sacrifice their adventurous lives to promote the adventurous spirit of their son.

No one in London knew where Teague had been for the past ten years, no one knew that he had all but become Spanish, raided English ships, and sailed around the world. They all simply knew him as a descendant of his parents, a young man who had been lost but now had returned. Alicia, of course, could not hide her Spanish heritage, but emphatically praised the King at every ball, came to church regularly, and was so beautiful and charming that no one cared. And so Jack Sparrow was raised a gentleman, with no idea who his parents really were.

**Massachusetts Bay: August, 1635**

Hector Barbossa, adopted son of Susan Hawkins and her husband Edmund, lived happily with his family in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Susan believed that darling Hector had been a gift from God—she was too small and sickly to have children, so when a five year old boy arrived at their church in 1635 with a package containing five shillings and a note in Portuguese saying _God bless whoever raises my dear son Barbossa, for I cannot_. The minister immediately contacted Susan and she accepted her charge with joy, giving her child the first name of Hector and deciding to love him like no other son had been loved.

The Hawkins family was relatively prominent in the colony; they had enough money and were resourceful, industrious people. Susan had come over a few years after the _Mayflower_ with her family, and Edmund Hawkins and his family had arrived slightly later. Both were very religious and believed strongly in their mission to create a colony where they could freely raise their children as Puritans and believed that their colony would serve as an example to the rest of the world.

Unlike Virginia, there were no large plantations and cash crops in Massachusetts. Instead, Hector grew up in a close-knit community of small farmers and livestock owners, who allowed their animals to graze communally and shared some of their bounty. Hector enjoyed playing with the other children in the community and quickly became the leader of all of their playtime activities, constantly daring his peers to climb the apple tree outside of his family's house.

There was something about the apple tree that Hector loved. He loved to climb it and pick the apples while they were still green, relishing the sour taste and crunchy texture. He loved to flip through his bible during that warm August and hear the occasional apple fall to the ground with a thud.

His mother doted on him excessively when she was not confined to her bed, and Hector loved her. His father was generally more distant, not as enthusiastic about their adopted son. Edmund was happy that his wife had a boy to take care of and that Hector made her happy, but he wished he had a son of his own, someone to truly take on the Hawkins name and bear it with dignity, like his ancestor Sir John Hawkins, who had provided Sir Francis Drake with ships and had journeyed with Drake to the New World. Could an anonymous boy with the name of Barbossa carry on in the Hawkins legacy? Would this boy ever _truly_ be a Puritan, or would he someday revert to customs learned in his first five years?

Though Hector looked perfectly English and seemed quite adept at reading and writing for a boy his age, he spoke a bit of Portuguese, which worried Edmund. He did not want this boy to jeopardize the progress or the Godliness of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but he could not tell his wife about his worries. So he remained distant from his adopted son, hoping that all would progress smoothly.

* * *

A/N: I guess I should explain why I chose the time frame for this story that I did. I originally wished to place the story during the early 1700's, as reference is made in the later two movies to the wane of piracy in the Caribbean. However, I realized that Port Royale, the main setting of _The Curse of the Black Pearl_, was destroyed in an earthquake in 1692. Therefore, none of the movies could possibly take place in the 1700's.

I chose 1665 for the events in _The Curse of the Black Pearl_, because at that time, piracy in Port Royale and around the Caribbean was flourishing. (It was during this time that Henry Morgan operated out of Jamaica.) I also chose 1665 because 30 years before in the 1630's, there was a massive influx of immigrants to the North American continent from England, and indentured servitude was still the main form of manual labor in the Caribbean and Virginia. (Thus, Bill Turner was able to come to the Americas as an indentured servant.)

Another note: I'm pretty solid with my understanding of colonial history, but I really don't know that much British history in general. So if I get something wrong, please don't hesitate to point that out. Thanks!


	3. Immigrant's Ills

Passage to Port Royale

**Chesapeake Bay: September, 1635**

Billy lay on a straw pallet covered by a rough blanket. His clothes were soiled and filthy, he wore no shoes, and his throat ached with a profound thirst that no wine, ale, or spirit could quench. The room he was in had a peaked roof, and in his delirious moment of waking, he realized he was so close to this roof that he could've touched it if he sat up. If he had the strength to sit up.

Only a week or so after he had gotten off the vile transport ship, found his plantation, and started his duties as a field hand, he had gotten the Immigrant's Fever. Some form of it attacked most new immigrants to Virginia, and many died. The day he had arrived, his master, Mr. Rose, had told him: "You look strong enough. Hopefully you won't die like my last one. I paid too much for you to drop off like she did." _Encouraging words_, Billy had thought at the time, not stopping to wonder if they were true.

Two weeks into his indenture, however, Billy saw the truth in Mr. Rose's words. He had not been out of his attic room for what he thought was about five days, though it could've been more. When he was awake, he found the Gloriana coin in his pocket and thought of his grandmother. He sent off prayers to his God, though only halfheartedly because he feared that God didn't watch out for poor people, especially poor people living outside their home country. Mostly, however, he was dreaming. He dreamed that people were playing loud, raucous music inside his head and that everyone around him was dancing until his skull exploded due to the pressure. When he shivered, he dreamt that his soul was trying to escape his wretched body, yearning for his homeland, attempting to return to its rightful place.

At times, he woke up and forgot all of his dreams. He looked at his surroundings, still unaccustomed to the newness of the wood floor, to the roughness of the beams in the ceiling, and to the bright, unflinching sunlight that streamed through the hole in the roof surrounding the chimney. _Sun shouldn't be this bright_, thought Billy as he awoke in his abject state, feeling awful and humiliated and alone. He reached in his pocket as always and found the Gloriana coin. He wondered if Queen Elizabeth had ever imagined that only 30 years after her death there would be the beginnings of an English empire in the New World. The Roanoke colony had failed, but Jamestown had succeeded, and tobacco had proven colonization of the New World profitable. _What if there was no tobacco?_ Billy asked himself. _What if there was no golden plant for me to harvest here? What would have happened to this place had Jamestown not succeeded? It probably would've gone back to the savages_, Billy answered himself.

The savages. Billy had never seen one. He had heard the stories about the original colonists' meetings with the powerful Powhatan tribe and the early idea that peace was a possibility. But somehow God had allowed for the settlers to survive and it never occurred to Billy that the savages were anything other than enemies. This New World was a strange place, a new and difficult frontier for any civilized person, and Billy wondered how so many people could've survived here for so long. They probably didn't catch his vile illness.

If Billy kept his eyes open for too long, the sunlight made him cry. So he generally kept them closed and held his coin in his right hand, hoping for some alleviation of the aching pain all over his body, or perhaps some subsiding of the burning in his throat. As he lay there in that manner--fingers clenched over the coin, eyes clenched shut--he heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. He supposed it was Mrs. Rose, coming to feed him some broth, or perhaps one of the four Rose children, who also slept in the attic room.

"Morning Mr. Turner. Are you awake?" It was a girl's voice. Billy didn't want to open his eyes for fear of the sun's glare. "Alright I guess not," the girl answered herself. "It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?" The girl was apparently talking to herself. "Indeed. There's not been a finer day since the day I arrived here last year." She paused. "But then again I say that every morning." Billy heard her cross over to his pallet and kneel down. He then felt the soothing sensation of a wet cloth on his forehead. "You've been catching quite a bit of dust up here Mr. Turner!" she exclaimed as she went on to wipe his neck. She patted his forehead with one rough hand--surprisingly rough for someone as young sounding as she, but then again she was presumably a field hand. "Now you are very lucky, Mr. Turner, if you can hear me. Well, I suppose you can't, but I'll tell you anyway. You have the finest master in all of Virginia, if you ask me. He may not be the richest, but he's certainly the kindest. He actually bought my indenture after I ran away from my old station! I do hope he's in love with me…" She took the cloth away from his neck and stood up.

"Could you imagine that? Me, a poor young London wench, doomed to a life of poverty, on the arm of a man like Mr. Rose? Ah, well, it can't be. He's married. But the New World is wondrous place, Mr. Turner. Absolutely perfect. They can bury me here and I'll be glad never to see wretched old England again!" She started down the stairs. "Well, I do hope you wake up soon Mr. Turner! I'll be back up with broth at suppertime!" And she began to whistle as she walked down.

--

That evening, Billy was awake when the girl brought up the broth. She came over to him and saw his open eyes. "Hello Mr. Turner. I saw you this morning but we weren't properly introduced." Billy turned his head a bit to see the girl who was talking at him. As he looked her up and down, he was generally pleased with what he saw. She was a peasant type like him, not someone from the merchant class or nobility, but she was pretty enough. Her hair was long and dark, twisted attractively into a long braid hanging down like a snake to the middle of her back. Her dress was worn and her hands were, as he had suspected, calloused, but her face was nice and her voice was easy to listen to. "I'm Sarah Anne."

"Hello" Billy managed.

"Oh so you do speak!" Sarah Anne smiled. Her teeth were incredibly ugly. _But probably not any uglier than mine_, Billy thought. Ugly teeth were more of a matter of life than a choice anyways. Only young children had beautiful teeth. "I just arrived here yesterday. I finally decided to run away from my good for nothing slave driver of a master!" She smiled again. Billy tried to smile back. "You know, I never got this sickness that they say all new immigrants get. I didn't even have to readjust my balance after getting off the boat that brought me here. I think I've had Virginia legs my entire life and everywhere else I was just topsy turvy the entire time!" She paused to offer him some broth.

"Now I know you haven't eaten, so that's why I'm offering it to you. If you don't sit up, it'll spill all over the place."

"Can't. Sit up." Billy croaked. Sarah Anne smiled and lifted the bowl of broth to her lips.

"Delicious," she said with the same excited relish with which she said everything. Billy suddenly smelled the scent of the broth from his pallet and tried to raise himself up to drink. Sarah Anne scooted over to help him lift his torso. "There, there, Mr. Turner, you can do this. You know, I've helped lots of new indentures recover from this awful illness. My old master bought...replacements each time one died. So I have a lot of practice. And I think you'll live, Mr. Turner. I just have this feeling. And Mr. Rose really doesn't deserve to lose another one." Billy finally managed to sit up. Sarah Anne lifted the bowl to his lips and he drank.

"Thanks," he said.

Sarah Anne studied him for a moment.

"You know what, Mr. Turner?"

"What?" Billy asked.

"You seem like a good sort. I hope you do well here. You know? I hope you find what you were looking for."

"I wasn't looking for anything." Billy said, the broth in his throat making his words come more easily.

"But of course you were. It's the New World, Mr. Turner! It's full of opportunities for poor folk like you and me to do something instead of just work our English fields and know our lives will be miserable. You could become a plantation owner! Or a merchant! The sky is clear here! The sun is bright! Did you ever see the sun shine so brightly in England?" She offered Billy some more broth. The Rose children came up the stairs and their mother beckoned them to calm down and go to sleep. "Well, I guess it's time for bed Mr. Turner." She finished off the bowl of broth. "I'll be sleeping in the other side of the room, with the girls. Just in case you need me." She smiled again.

"Good night, Sarah Anne," Billy managed. And then he fell back down and tried to sleep.


	4. A New Cash Crop

**Passage to Port Royale**

**St. Kitts: April, 1640**

Weatherby Swann stood outside his simple two-story, four room house on top of a hill and looked out as far as his eyes could take him. Most of the land before him was his land. All of the ploughed fields before him were his fields. He felt immensely proud of his accomplishments, as he had made money selling the golden tobacco weed back to those pompous, good for nothing rich men back in England (and dealing to other nationalities on the side a bit). But on this day, he knew that the slow trickle of gold into his coffers would soon become an unstoppable deluge.

When he arrived on his land in 1635 with his indentures and a bit of start up gold, he had immediately set off to plant tobacco, the island's main cash crop. His dream was to be the baron of his plantation, the governor of a great moneymaking operation—his dream was to show his parents, born into society, that real prestige came from going out and working hard and daring to become richer than anyone with their stuffy ways could ever imagine. And he had made money selling his tobacco, no doubt: his plantation was one of the more profitable ones; he had made enough money for a sturdy house and was about to order glass to put in his windowpanes. Against the odds, he had survived on a barely tamed island thousands of miles from his homeland for five years. Many med could not even do that. But Weatherby Swann was not content with simply surviving: he wanted to be the greatest plantation baron there ever was, and would not stop until he had built an empire that would gain him political clout and social prestige, enough to show his parents that success came with money.

With competition from the Chesapeake Bay colony, tobacco no longer fetched the high prices that Weatherby had grown accustomed to. He knew that if he continued to grow tobacco on his relatively tiny island plot while others were buying hundreds of cheap acres in Virginia and turning those acres into fields of golden weed, he would not make money anymore. Whenever he went into the port to sell his tobacco, he would make a point to spend many hours at the tavern discussing the colonial economy with plantation owners and traders.

Standing on the hilltop, surveying his land, Weatherby thought of his last visit to the port. After haggling with an insensitive English merchant over the price of his fine goods, he stopped in at one of the taverns for a drink and some small talk. He knew the other plantation owners in the area well, and they too noticed that the demand for tobacco was decreasing as more and more people settled the Chesapeake Bay colony. They knew that they had to switch to a new crop that couldn't be grown in Virginia—a crop that English traders could buy that they couldn't get from many other English colonies. Some smugglers told them that Dutch and Spanish colonies were growing sugarcane, which thrived in the Caribbean climate and was fetching a high price in every market.

For a few more coins than he would've liked, Weatherby Swann purchased some sugarcane cuttings from the smugglers and rode back out to his land.

Looking out over his property, Weatherby Swann could already smell the sweet juice of the sugarcane plants squishing under his bite. More importantly, he could already feel the weight of the gold coins in his pocket after selling his precious sugar. Sure, he would need more laborers to cultivate his new cash crop, but Portuguese ships were bringing in more and more shipments of African indentured laborers every month. Their price and upkeep was cheaper, and Weatherby was looking to keep as much of his fortune to himself as possible. He breathed in and closed his eyes, seeing himself in a few years, standing in this very spot, a sturdy brick mansion with an English garden behind him, an adoring English wife at his side, and miles and miles of sugarcane plants for as far as the eyes could see.

Weatherby Swann opened his eyes. He turned around and walked into his house and began a letter to his parents.

_Dearest mother and father,_

_I hope this letter fins you both in good health, and I apologize for the infrequency of my correspondence. Please forgive me, as I have been busy augmenting my fortunes here in the New World. I am exceedingly happy with my life here and my current fortunes, and have recently begun to grow a new crop which should bring even more gold into the Swann fortune. Father, if you are ever in need of gold for trifles for mother or improvements to our estate, do not hesitate to contact me as I have an excess of riches._

_In fact, dear parents, I have everything I could ever want here in the New World, save for one thing—a bride. Upstanding young ladies do not venture to the New World themselves, I am afraid, because truly, though we have most of the comforts of England here, the New World is no place for a woman. So I must inform you that in a few years' time, I will return for a short time to our estate with gold and exotic gifts for you all. All I ask of you in the meantime is to extol my virtues and proclaim my riches to those you know with daughters of marriageable age. This family's name and fortunes are of the utmost importance to me. _

_I hope you are well, and as a token of my good faith I am sending along with this letter some silks I picked up from Spanish traders as well as a few native island plants for mother's amusement._

_Your Dutiful and Loving Son,_

_Weatherby Swann_


End file.
